Mage and Templar
by sheepishwolfy
Summary: Before he was commander of the Inquisition's forces, he was just a another young templar. Before she was the Hero of Ferelden, she was just another mage apprentice. And Varric is determined to get the tale of how mage met templar.
1. Prologue

Two glasses and a bottle of what appeared to be West Hill brandy appeared on the desk, followed shortly by the scraping of a chair across the stone floor. The commander flicked his eyes upward only long enough to note the dwarf now seating himself opposite the desk.

"Something I can do for you, Varric?" Cullen asked, turning his eyes back to his reports.

"Are you aware there is a massive hole in your ceiling?" Varric replied, uncorking the bottle and pouring several fingers- practically a whole fist- of brandy into each glass.

"Yes, quite. Not a single person has entered the room without commenting on it." He frowned as he continued to write, gesturing to the glasses with his quill between sentences. "Was the tavern full?"

"No, but between Bull and his chargers it may as well be," Varric said, chuckling. With one thick finger he pushed a glass carefully towards the commander, then picked up his own. He slowly swirled the brandy, and fixed Cullen with a level stare. "So tell me about the Hero of Ferelden."

The tip of the quill snapped as it scratched harshly across the width of the parchment with the sudden jerk of his hand. Cullen stared deerlike at the jagged line and thick splatter of ink now ruining his report. Eventually he cleared his throat and carefully set aside the broken quill. "Excuse me?"

"You knew her before she was the Hero," Varric explained.

"Briefly, a very long time ago," Cullen said curtly.

"You served in the Calenhad circle, where she lived before being conscripted to the Wardens. Surely you must have something to say about her." Varric couldn't help but grin at the former templar's obviously growing annoyance.

"Varric, if you're writing another book I hardly see how anything I have to say will be of any use," Cullen said, yanking open a desk drawer and hunting for a fresh pen. "So if you would excuse me-"

"Oh, I'm not writing a book about the Blight," Varric interjected. "Or I wasn't, though it would be a great setting... Anyway, no, that's not why I'm here. We were hoping you might have some kind of insight on where to find her."

"And what in the Maker's name gave you that idea?" Cullen demanded. He plucked a small paring knife from the desk and with quick, irritated motions set to sharpening the tip of his new quill.

"Leliana," Varric said. "She was, as I'm sure you know, one of the Warden's companions during the Blight."

"Then go bloody talk to her."

"She and the Seeker have been hunting the Warden for at least as long as they were hunting Hawke. Whatever knowledge our Spymaster has, it isn't enough." Varric paused and took a sip of his brandy. "But you knew her when she was an apprentice. Maybe something you have will give us a clue."

Cullen sighed. "Trust me when I tell you that nothing I have to say will do you any good. It's been twelve- no, thirteen?- years since I had anything to do with her."

"Look, Curly, I'm doing you a favor by coming here myself. When Cassandra heard you were ever even in the same room with the Warden, she wanted to come over here and rake you over the coals herself. Trust _me_ when I tell you that's not something you want to happen."

The commander stared across the desk, jaw set, for a long moment.

"I can go get her, though, if you would rather-"

"Maker, no," Cullen said quickly, defeated. He sighed again, laying quill and knife at the edge of the desk. His papers he gathered quickly, carefully together and stacked them out of the way. With one hand he pulled the other glass of brandy towards himself, certain he would need it if he was to spend the rest of the evening talking about the Circle, let alone about _her_. He took a sip, letting the alcohol burn a path down his throat before speaking again. "What is it you want to know, exactly?"

"Anything you have to tell. What was she like? Where would she have gone, if you had to guess?" Varric asked.

Cullen sat back in his chair, thinking for a moment. "Lyanna was-"

"Lyanna? That's awfully familiar for someone who only knew her 'briefly'," Varric said, eyeing the commander over his drink.

"At the circle she was just Lyanna," Cullen said tersely, frowning. "Apprentices didn't have titles."

"Apologies, messere, for the interruption," Varric said, lifting his free hand. "Carry on."

Taking another drink, Cullen continued. "She was top of her class. I recall her studying late into the evenings in the libraries. Not even necessarily because she had to, but because she enjoyed it. The reading, the theory. She probably read every book in the tower twice. And if she wasn't in the library, she was in the greenhouse. I think she must have loved plants as much as she loved books, and knew the name and use of every herb and flower you could think of."

He ran his finger around the rim of the glass, gazing almost absently into the amber liquid as old memories returned to him fresh as though it had been yesterday. Varric kept quiet, though he made note of a certain wistfulness creeping into the normally reserved commander's voice.

"She was a _very_ talented healer," he said. "She was apprenticed directly to the Senior Enchanter who ran the tower's infirmary, but even as an apprentice she made better poultices and salves than Wynne herself did. My guess is Lyanna would have eventually become First Enchanter, if she had remained at the tower. Provided she..." Cullen caught himself before he said _survived Uldred's uprising, _swallowing the words and hoping Varric didn't press for an explanation.

"Above all," he said instead, "above all, she was kind. To children on their first nights in the tower, to stiff old enchanters, even... even to the templars. She had a kind word and a gentle hand for everyone."

Unable to help himself, Varric smirked and added, "And I suppose the first time you met, she was the most beautiful thing you had ever lain your young eyes upon."

To Varric's surprise, Cullen didn't glare or snap. He tapped his fingers on the desk, and a small smile brushed his lips. "No, she wasn't, actually. She was... probably all of fourteen. Skinny, taller than half the apprentices her age. Tall as I was, in truth. All knees and elbows. Eyes too big for her face. Not to say I was any better. I was sixteen, fresh from the farm, certain I was going to spend my life being a hero and hunting apostates in the name of Andraste."

"I'm going to go out on a limb here and say you knew her better than you let on," Varric said, carefully, hoping to keep the commander talking.

Cullen let out a long, slow breath, and nodded. "I... yes," he said. "Though I highly doubt anything that happened then will be of any help to Cassandra."

"Let's let her be the judge of that," Varric suggested. "Why don't you just start from the beginning, and we'll go from there."

"We didn't speak to one another for... three, maybe four years after my arrival. She was just another apprentice in a sea of them and I was preoccupied with my training. Apprentices and initiates rarely, if ever, have reason to talk."

"But..?" Varric prompted.

Cullen smiled again, that same small, faintly wistful smile. "But sometimes, they do have reason. And that day, we did."


	2. Chapter 1

The sun beat hard on him, heating the steel prison of his armor. Sweat ran into his eyes, plastered his hair to his temples, coursed in thin rivulets down his neck. His breath was impossibly loud inside his helmet, drowning out the thump and clatter of weapons practice continuing around him. He couldn't feel his left arm below the elbow.

Blinking against the sunlight burning through his visor, Templar initiate Cullen attempted to sit up. His right arm alone barely managed to push his weight up, and he shook his head once to clear it. Nearby, Cullen's sparring partner stood totally still, staring, eyes wide enough for the whites to be visible through the slit in her visor. Around them, he realized, the practice yard had gone silent.

"Maker's breath, Cullen, I'm sorry!" she exclaimed.

The armsmaster, Knight-Captain Bran, appeared. "Don't just stand there, initiate, fetch a healer!" he snapped, then bent and plucked something off the ground. He knelt, gesturing with the object- a sun-bleached shard of wood- at Cullen's face. "Son, this right here is why we pay attention to our equipment."

It was, Cullen realized, a piece of a shield. What had been _his_ shield, before it split beneath the weight of an over-handed blow, shattering like so much glass. He'd picked it not even an hour ago from a selection of what he'd thought were identical ones, assuming one slab of wood and steel was as good as the next.

Clearly, he had been wrong.

"Can you stand?" Bran asked, straightening.

"Yes," Cullen replied, looking down to push himself to his feet.

He stopped immediately and stared, uncomprehending, at his left arm. There was a dent in the gauntlet where his forearm should have been, bending his hand away at an impossibly sharp angle. He blinked several times, attempted to wiggle his fingers. Blood began to seep thickly from the edge of his glove.

"Oh," he said, blinking again.

Then another, almost involuntary. "Oh."

The third "oh" stretched out into a long exhalation, pitched too low for a whine but too high for a true groan. His stomach lurched, his head felt as though it might float away, and his vision narrowed to a pinpoint focused on the drops of his own blood falling to the dusty ground. Then he was falling to the dusty ground, his helmet ringing against the hard-packed earth.

"Maker's tangled beard, get him to the shade." Bran's voice sounded distant, like he was yelling down a long corridor. Two pairs of hands seized Cullen by the armpits and the ankles and lifted him. He was dimly aware that he was still making the same sound, the same not-whine-not-groan.

"And get that bloody helmet off him before he pukes in it!"

When Cullen opened his eyes he was lying on the ground again, now in the shade, the Circle tower looming over him. His helmet was off, and someone was pressing a cool, damp cloth to his forehead. A delicate wrist passed through his line of sight, and he followed the length of a slender arm to a shoulder, up a swanlike neck to a narrow face framed by long, rail-straight black hair. She wasn't looking at him, her attention instead on two people arguing a few paces away.

"You should have brought him to the infirmary," snapped a woman's voice. Senior Enchanter Wynne, if he had to hazard a guess from the sharp tone alone. "It's ridiculous, leaving him in the dirt like that!"

"Do you have any idea how heavy a boy his size is, in full plate? If I'd had him carried him up four flights of stairs, you'd have _three _to heal about instead of one!" came the reply. Knight-Captain Bran.

"Instead you left him bleeding on the ground," said Wynne, exasperated.

The girl, likely an apprentice, glanced briefly at him. Her attention returned immediately when she realized he was awake. "Senior Enchanter," she called over her shoulder. To him she said, "I'm Lyanna Amell."

"Uh... Cullen," he replied.

"Well, it's nice to meet you," she said, and smiled. She had the sweetest smile he had ever seen, and the bluest eyes. Like the summer sky just before dusk, nearly indigo.

Behind them, the Senior Enchanter and the Knight-Captain stalled their argument long enough to notice Cullen had come to. Bran squatted at his side, opposite Lyanna. Wynne remained standing, arms crossed.

"Good, you're awake," Wynne said. "We stopped your bleeding for the most part, but I wanted you conscious before we did much more. Would you allow my apprentice to care for you?"

"Andraste's sake, woman, you want to trust him to an apprentice?" Bran protested.

"I asked the boy," she replied sharply, shooting the Knight-Captain a withering look.

"I find it hard to believe a lifelong circle mage would talk to a templar like that."

Cullen merely shrugged at Varric's skepticism. "Not all circles were like Kirkwall," he said. "In fact, looking back on it, I'd say most circles weren't at all like Kirkwall. There was, in Kinloch Hold at least, a... respect, I guess, between the mages and templars."

"That didn't sound much like respect to me," Varric said.

"You didn't know Wynne," Cullen laughed. "Or Bran, for that matter. He was stubborn and ill-tempered as an old mule, and she didn't take shit from anyone. _Anyone_. I once watched her cow the Knight-Commander himself into letting her leave the tower without any sort of templar escort."

"She sounds terrifying."

"She was," the commander agreed. "I always liked her, though."

"I asked the boy," Wynne snapped. In a gentler tone, she addressed Cullen again. "I'll be standing right here, watching, but this is a rare opportunity for an apprentice to learn. So, is it alright if she handles your care?"

"I... Uh, sure?" Lying on the ground as he was, he couldn't exactly argue either way.

Beside him, Bran threw his hands up, and stood. "Madness," he muttered. "Good luck, initiate."

Wynne rolled her eyes and shook her head, then motioned to her apprentice. "Well, go ahead."

"Oh, um... alright," Lyanna said, seemingly surprised. She shook it off quickly, though, and when she turned back to him she was all business.

"You've broken your arm in at least one place," she informed him. As she spoke, she reached behind her head to tie back her hair, twisting it quickly around her finger and knotting it with a thin leather cord. It was, he noted, the blue-black of a raven's feathers. When she finished, she gently lifted his still-numb, still-gauntleted, still-nauseatingly-bent arm into her lap."There's a pretty strong possibility it's an open fracture. I can't be sure until I get your glove off, though."

"Okay. It... it doesn't hurt, though." It couldn't be that bad, he thought, if it still didn't hurt much.

She winced, and cast him a sympathetic look. "It will."

With quick, careful motions she undid the straps holding the steel gauntlet to the leather glove beneath, lifting it away and setting it aside. Faced with the glove, bulging around the horrifying mystery of his broken arm, she paused again.

"That's not coming off easily," she murmured, mostly to herself, and reached into a satchel resting next to her. Lyanna drew out a set of sewing shears and set to slowly, _slowly_ cutting through the leather.

After what must have been hours- but was likely just a few minutes- she dropped the shears back into the bag. "Moment of truth," she said. Cullen could feel that the inside of the glove was sticky, probably with his own blood, and despite his better judgment lifted his head to watch Lyanna work.

He instantly regretted it, as he realized that she was peeling the glove away from exposed bone. His bone. His actual bone, jagged and gleaming white in the indirect sunlight, protruding garishly through the flesh of his arm.

"Oh," he said, again, and dropped his head back to the ground.

"Sorry," Lyanna said, and glanced up. 'Does it hurt?"

"No." Pain lanced up his arm, searing from his mangled wrist to his shoulder. "Yes," he amended.

He felt one of her hands wrap around his elbow, the other curling around his now-bare fingers. There was the quiet hum of magic, making the hair the back of his neck stand up. Warmth spread between the two points, and the pain dulled from white-hot to tepid. Still present, but bearable. He was able to concentrate on her voice when she spoke again.

"You have two options," she said, sitting back. "I can heal you completely, and you can be back in the yard tomorrow. Or, I can do just enough to push the bone back into place, close the skin over it, but let your body heal the rest of the way itself. Faster than just letting you heal on your own, but you'll still need a week or two to get totally back to normal."

"And why would he bloody want the second choice?" Bran demanded. "Get on with it, apprentice, heal him up and let's be on our way."

Lyanna met the Knight-Captain's gaze with all the cool confidence of a full-fledged Enchanter. "It's _always_ best to let the body do as much as it can on its own," she explained, just on the edge of condescending; clearly she was Wynne's apprentice in more than just magic. "The bone knits together slower, but it's stronger than if we just force it back into place entirely by magic. I can have him in working order by the end of the afternoon, but he's more likely to just break it again in the same place sometime in the future."

Bran stared at her for a long time, unsure how to respond to a lecture from an apprentice. "Fair enough," he said finally. "Let him decide."

Lyanna looked back to Cullen, but before she could ask he blurted, "I never want to do this again."

"Slowly it is," she said. She shifted slightly, adjusting the position of his arm over her knees.

Again he lifted his head to watch her, unable to stop himself. The motions of her hands, graceful yet precise, were entrancing. Her fingers, slender against the broad expanse of his wrist, were soft and warm. The heel of her opposite palm came to rest over his forearm, just barely touching the exposed bone. Blood stained the back of her hand, dark against her pale skin. Delicate knuckles-

"You know, at this point, I feel like I can picture her hands better than her face," Varric mused.

Cullen cleared his throat and looked away, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck. Spots of color appeared high on his cheeks. "I don't..." he began to protest, but stopped with a sigh. "She had the most lovely hands," he said instead.

"As would befit a healer, I suppose," the dwarf said, smirking.

Lyanna placed her hands on his broken arm, and took a deep breath. Her eyes darted up to meet his, and she smiled apologetically. "This is probably going to hurt," she said, the sympathy in her voice practically palpable. "A lot."

There was a flare of magic, and Lyanna lifted onto her knees, bearing much of her weight down onto Cullen's arm. He became acutely aware of his bones grinding against one another, of his skin pulling together to seal over the open wound. His muscles flexed painfully tight. Feeling erupted back into his fingers, which flexed convulsively as severed tendons reconnected.

He then promptly, blessedly, blacked out for the second time that day.


End file.
